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Martinelli v. Holmes

The March edition of the LRK quarterly newsletter will go out next week, and in case you’re not a subscriber, I should mention that one of the things it talks about is, we’re giving away ARCs. That’s right, throughout March and April, I’ll be giving away one copy of the bound galleys of THE ART OF DETECTION every Monday, just to get your week off to the right start. This will be a random drawing taken from the names on the web site’s mailing list, so if you’re not on it, sign up now, and you’ll have eight chances of seeing what Kate Martinelli does with Sherlock Holmes before anyone else does.

There’ll also be some really fun (?) or maybe terrifying news on the newsletter, about an event I'm doing in May.

And for my English readers, if you have any specific suggestions of stores, libraries, and the like that might enjoy a visit from yours truly, please send those to me and I’ll forward them to Poisoned Pen Press U.K

A kingdom united

My readers in the UK may be pleased to hear that, beginning with THE ART OF DETECTION on August 22 and picking up a fair number of the backlist along the way, I will be published by Poisoned Pen Press U.K. I’m really looking forward to working with them, not only because they’re great people (Yes I know the truism that you shouldn’t form business relationships with friends, but friendship with agents and editors seems to work for me.) but also because they have an exciting take on how the publishing world works, namely, that if you publish books people want to read, you may actually sell those books. God, is this a radical idea or what?

As I said, THE ART OF DETECTION should be out in the UK around August 22, and they’ll be bringing out THE BEEKEEPER’S APPRENTICE and A GRAVE TALENT as paperback reprints soon as well. AND (roll of drums, please) there’s a good chance I’ll be there for a tour, perhaps the first part of September.

I am very much looking forward to this new relationship, which will finally see books available to UK readers other than by mail from the US. I’ll have more to say about it later, and I’ll post the cover art on my web site when it reaches me, but in the meantime, if you’re interested in the Press, take a look at their web site. It’s mostly about their American branch, but it tells you something about my new home.

So, see you in September!

Inertia

Inertia has two effects: in one, a kid on wheels going downhill will continue moving fast even when no longer going downhill--indeed, even when there’s a tree in his way. In the second, a kid lying motionless on the ground takes some doing to get moving again.

A while back I wrote about the first kind of inertia, where this book I’m working on was happily whizzing along at 1500 brisk words a day and all I had to do was show up and press the right buttons on the laptop. At the moment, we’re going through the other kind of inertia, where every word is a battle and 1500 words takes a major part of the day, and then they’re bad and will have to be cut and reshaped and leave me ill-tempered and the only good thing I can say about them is that they’re there.

When things are rolling, decisions make themselves, or at most, provide an amusing diversion: Is the family dark or light-haired? One son or two?

At the moment, every choice is agonizing, no matter how small. For example, I’ve established that the mother and father are both into dogs, since the mother hunts (ie, packs of beagles) and the father occasionally sets his hounds on passing undergraduates intent on mischief. But dogs like that aren’t really a presence in the family’s daily life, being a collective rather than a personality, and besides, they’re generally housed elsewhere. So should I provide my country house with a few dogs as well? And if so, are they little creatures like dachshunds, or something more hefty? On the one hand, it really doesn’t matter; on the other hand, the choice of pets says a great deal about the owner, and I just don’t know what I want to say.

And looming large are the more weighty choices, such as: How to bring my two groups together without depending on the kind of knobbly coincidence that bashes the shins of every passing reader?

So today I’ll spend the morning re-reading the 140 pages of TOUCHSTONE and trying to get a handle on where the book is going. With luck, I’ll catch a glimmer of light that I can follow. And if the gods don’t smile on me, it’s back to moving immovable bodies for a while.

Writing with the back of the brain

This past week my first stand-alone novel, A DARKER PLACE (or in the UK, THE BIRTH OF A NEW MOON) was the topic of discussion for a group of MFA writing students from the Whidby Island Writing Association. The students would post comments on various topics, I would read them each day and post remarks of my own whenever I thought I could add to the discussion, but mostly what happened was I sat back, amazed that I’d got away with it. These people, all of whom tossed around writing terms I’d never heard of (what on earth is a ficelle???) actually thought I knew what I was doing. Me, who last took a writing class when they were still diagramming sentences, who thought once that she’d invented this clever technique which later turned out to be called foreshadowing, who at book eighteen still flails and struggles her way through a first draft like a camper in a collapsed tent—they thought I actually knew what I was doing when I wrote a novel.

Far be it from me to disabuse them of the notion. And actually, I am convinced that some part of the back of my brain actually does know what it’s doing. Half the time I write away, putting in page after page of, for example, a description of an eccentric country house, telling myself that I’ll surely cut it all in the rewrite, only to find a hundred pages later on that I’ve given myself something in all that description that’s absolutely essential to the story I need to tell.

The back of my head does it all. But do I tell writing students that, people who have invested a lot of time and money in learning to do it with the front of their brain? No, because that way does work for some people, and just because I’m not one of them doesn’t mean that it’s not a useful technique for others.

* *
And speaking of British humo(u)r, which I was in the last post, if you don’t know the short program called “Posh Nosh,” check these out:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/poshnosh/clips/

Absolutely priceless humour.

Honey in the air

The other night driving back from movie-and-sushi with a friend (“Mrs. Henderson Presents”—great movie, although much of the humor was too British for Santa Cruz) I got stuck behind a truck of beehives.

Yes, spring is coming. The early flowers are out here, boosted by a week of weirdly summery weather (80 degrees, in February?) and although the apple trees are still winter-bare, they must be thinking about it. Clearly, the farmers are, hence the hives.

Because the night was warm, I had my window open, and the smell was amazing: a heavy smell of dark honey mixed with a dose of diesel fuel.

So to my friends on the East coast, have faith. The bees will return.

A book grows

For reasons unrelated to much of anything, I needed to send what I have of TOUCHSTONE to my editor this week. I don’t normally give her—or anyone—a look until a ms is finished, but this one is feeling so strong to me I figured it couldn’t hurt the process any. So I did and she wrote back “You were correct. My life is irrevocably altered. Now what shall I read? Nothing else will please me.”

(You see why I love my editor?)

So that’s all good. Of course, it doesn’t mean I’m not in my usual fog of confusion, and doesn’t mean that I have anything but the faintest idea of what’s coming next. It does mean I feel solid about the book and have an anchor point at the end of it, and I know myself well enough to see that it will probably be enough to get me there.

TOUCHSTONE is coming up to 100 pages now, roughly a third of a first draft. Three central characters are now down pat, in the sense that I know how they speak, what they look like, how they will react in a given situation—with surprises, of course, it wouldn’t be writing if there weren’t surprises. A fourth character has just appeared, with the last two waiting in the wings.

And I’ve been reading a ton of boy-books, to immerse myself in the pace and feel of what are usually called thrillers—Lee Child, Bob Crais, Jeff Parker, Tom Perry, almost all of them books I’ve read before. Because TOUCHSTONE is that kind of story, harder and faster than the Russells, heavily populated by males (of the six main characters, four are men.)

And for the past week or so, the book has laid hands on me. It’s there during my every waking hour and some of my sleeping, its texture and the choices: What is the first thing Bennett Grey’s sister does when she appears? Would the American lawman have a gun with him in this English country house? How to show the relationship between Grey and the main woman character?

Small touches with major impact: If a young woman steps demurely out of the car and puts out her hand to her brother, or if she bounces out and flings herself at him, says the world about her, and him, and them.

Many of these small and vital episodes come to me when I’m doing something else, which is why it’s good not to try to write too many hours a day. I find swimming such a great means of generating plot twists and settling plot problems that I really ought to be able to deduct my mini-pool as a writing expense.

So at 1500 words a day, TOUCHSTONE grows. I’ve managed that stint for the past week, and have another few days before life interrupts during the mornings when I write—I’m taping some chat with the local PBS station for their Friday night mystery pledge break, which means half the population of Bay Area PBS viewers will hate me for that damned interruption of some great program. Sorry about that.

King George

Andrew Sullivan’s essays at the back of TIME magazine are often the best part of the whole 75 pages. A week or so ago (Jan 23) he wrote “We Don’t Need a New King George”, which you can access, sort of, on the TIME web site. But since it appears to need a subscription, here’s part of it, retyped for you by my very own hard-working fingers. It concerns a little-known (at least, until this inhabitant of the White House) attachment to new laws called a “signing statement,” in which the President, when unable to veto a law because of the number of votes by which it has passed, is able to attach a sort of minority report which says, in effect, that he has no intention of actually obeying this law he’s just signed.

Now, I may be wrong, but as I remember my high school civics lessons, the president is the head of the executive branch, not the legislative, not the judicial. He is sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He executes laws, he does not make them. However, in this looking-glass presidency, I appear to be mistaken about this.

In his essay, Sullivan is talking about the McCain anti-torture amendment, which passed by enormous veto-proof majorities in both House and Senate:

“So Bush backed down, embraced McCain and signed it. The debate was over, right? That’s how our democracy works, right?

“Not according to this President. Although the meaning of the law was crystal clear and the Constitution says Congress has the exclusive power to ‘make rules concerning Captures on Land and Water,’ Bush demurred.

“He issued a signing statement that read, ‘The executive branch shall constitute Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power.’

“Translation: If the President believes torture is warranted to protect the country, he’ll violate the law and authorize torture. If the courts try to stop him, he’ll ignore them, too. This wasn’t quibbling or spinning. Like the old English kings who insisted that Parliament could not tell them what to do, Bush all but declared himself above a law he signed. One professor who specializes in this constitutional area, Phillip J. Cooper of Portland State University in Oregon, has described the power grabs as ‘breathtaking.’”

Sullivan concludes, “A President, Democrat or Republican, has every right to act unilaterally at times to defend the country. But a democracy cannot work if the person who is deputed to execute the laws exempts himself from them when he feels like it. Forget the imperial presidency. This is more like a monarchical one. America began by rejecting the claims of one King George. It’s disturbing to think we may now be quietly installing a second one.”

A year of muttering

Tomorrow marks a year since this blog started, an experiment to see if I could bear the additional demands of a regular, newsletter-style communication with the people who like my books. I always hated getting roped into the kids’ newsletters at school, since it seemed that no sooner did we finally get one issue off to the printer’s than another one would loom up. But blogs are, I am finding, a different animal. I try to post at least twice a week, and think I’ve managed during the twelvemonth, but without a specific word count, and with complete freedom of topics, it’s more like a chat with friends than anything formal.

In other words, if you like, we’ll continue with a second year.

It’s going to be a great year to write about, too, with THE ART OF DETECTION publishing in June, so that Kate Martinelli makes a return, as well as the ongoing writing process for TOUCHSTONE, which I assume you out there in Blogland would like to follow. The book is shaping up in some very interesting ways—I think I’ll write about it later this week.

Happy anniversary, Mutterers!

Feb Q&A (3)

Q: Jaimee asks, I was wondering if you have ever thought of writing a travelogue or a memoir? Your descriptions of locale throughout all of your books are fascinating, and through your blog I have really enjoyed your personal stories about your experiences (such as the cockroach story). Reading your books tends to make me want to pack a suitcase so it made me wonder...

A: If I ever write an autobiography, I will probably use the sections on travel as I did in the one on my web site, in order to illustrate how I draw on the experiences of travel in the writing process. When I was actually on the road, most of the time it was like being tossed in a sack, tiring and uncomfortable and very, very confusing.

Gives you some great stories, though.


Q: I'm curious about your current favorite mystery writers ... those who are alive and writing today. Could you list a few, or would that put you too much on the spot? There seem to be a lot of promising newcomers on the shelves these days.

A: I read everyone. At least, it seems that way. I particularly love first-time novels, which have probably more energy in them than any five novels that writer will produce in the future. The list of nominees for Best First Novel over on the MWA site is a good place to start, and you can look at last year’s nominees to see those recommended by the committee I chaired.

I also like the Brits a lot. UK publishing has veered far over the line into the gritty serial killer book, which leaves me yawning, but writers like Catherine Sampson and Zoe Sharp are a joy.


Q: WMD, er, I mean WDI asks, I'm curious about how much backstory you develop for your "series" characters. Do you envision entire lives from childhood, or broad outlines that fill themselves in as new stories develop? I'm interested in this as a general question, but also as it applies to some of Russell’s physical skills. She's a good rider, but we don't know much about when she learned or how she keeps it up. Ditto with her martial arts -- we know when she started training, but not whether or not (or how) she maintains her skills. Do you carry a sort of vision of her life in which those things play a part, or do you simply allow the skills to manifest as needed and assume she takes care of them herself?(I hope that makes sense!)

A: It’s always a fine line with larger-than-life characters like Russell, what sorts of skills are realistic and which have the reader declaring, Oh come on now. Someone like Russell, raised by money in London and America, would have learned to ride as a child, and although she would have had far sorer muscles than I give her when she rides again after a break, the skill is there. The martial arts thing is mentioned often enough that clearly, she practices with some regularity.

For the most part, you don’t tend to write about a character’s abilities and habits unless you need them for the story. At the same time, the acquisition of new skills has to fit with what we know of the character. So for example when Russell has an immersion course in Hindi, and gains a working knowledge of the language in a month, it’s not too far outside the bounds of possibility. It has already been established that she spends a lot of time with foreign languages, living and dead, so when I came across the results of a language-learning contest held in Oxford, won by two young women who started from scratch and in a month could recite a poem and carry on a simple conversation in their assigned language, well, why not Mary Russell?


Q: Thank you for writing the Mary Russell series. My post-exams reward was to sit in front of the heater with Locked Rooms and a hot chocolate. Sheer bliss. A question that popped into my head last night (I hope it's not too personal - or worse, airheaded):Can writers make good money from their writings alone? Not including whatever they get from movie deals or merchandise.

A: I’m glad to have provided a comfort moment for a hard-working student. I seem to have an entire subset of readers who indulge in Russell post-exam, perhaps we ought to have annual cocoa parties?

Anyway. It is possible to make a living off writing (which I assume is what you mean by “good money”) if you are very lucky, very hard working, and possess a modicum of talent. The average income of a writer is well under $10,000, which in my county might buy you a cardboard box and a bus pass to the soup kitchen.

I happen to have a modicum of talent, I am (to my own surprise) hard-working to the point of obsession, and certainly I have had more luck than I probably deserve. I make a living off my words, the books you buy put a roof over my head, and every day I am grateful for the opportunity to keep on doing what I love. Yes, even on days when the writing goes badly and I feel too stupid to live, I am grateful. I have friends whose writing barely pays for itself, when you factor in typing and child care costs, but they continue to do it. I like to think I would do the same, if I had full-time employment elsewhere.

You have to want it. A lot.

* * *
More on the progress of TOUCHSTONE in a few days.

Feb’s Q&A (2)

Q: Kay asks, Laurie-I'm wondering when you write a series (if, in fact, you meant to) do you visualise several books into the future, or do they come to you one adventure at a time?
PS Loved Cat's Paw--there were elements of Russell in there!

A: Elements of Russell in the story of a middle-school basketball coach? Hmmm, okay.

As to the first question, the answer is both. Sometimes I know that I’ll want to do such and such with a later book, so I’ll lay the groundwork for it. But because I don’t outline anything or know what I’m doing until I do it, I try to leave it very general. I had some problems working Russell’s backstory into LOCKED ROOMS, for example, since that history was given in THE BEEKEEPER’S APPRENTICE, written nearly fifteen years before.

Two examples of groundwork-laying are the chapter in BEEKEEPER when Russell and Holmes trundle off to Palestine, since I vaguely knew I wanted to write a book about the country and the time, but within the confines of BEEKEEPER was not the place for it. And in THE GAME, there is a mysterious person who dogs their heels on the boat down the Suez Canal and Red Sea, followed by a possible murder attempt, which is not resolved until the next book, LOCKED ROOMS.

Of course, the problem with allowing things to dangle is that you get reviews that use those unresolved plot twists as evidence that 1) you don’t know what you’re doing or 2) you’re getting sloppy as you become more successful. Since professionals don’t sit down and write sharp-tongued rebuttal letters to reviewers, there’s not much you can do except tell yourself, Man, he’ll find out how wrong he was next year this time. Then of course the next book is given to someone else for review. Sigh.


Q: Have you had any feedback from Vietnam vets on the Vietnam portion of Keeping Watch? I thought you did a tremendous job on that part, and hope someone who was there congratulated you on it (instead of nit-picking.)

A: I have had very little picking of Vietnamese nits with KEEPING WATCH, and much praise with how I got it right, some of it from men who should know. Which surprised me, actually, since the research I did was often confusing, even contradictory. (Odd, for an event in the recent past, and so heavily bureaucratized, as that war.) Techniques and equipment standard at the beginning of the war were out of date by its end, and seemed even to vary from one part of the country to the next.

As with any such piece of writing, the trick lies in nailing the telling details. You’ll be forgiven for getting the contents of the C-rations slightly wrong if you get the men’s attitude about it right. A vet will overlook a mistake in the day of the week the Army’s malaria pills were handed out if the sensation of quinine buzzing through the veins is given clearly enough.


Q: Dianna asks, From the oh-too brief appearance of Lord Peter, and the previous month's response on Sayers homage among Kate's novels (by the way, is the one in The Art of Detection included in the sample?), it's quite clear you're a fan of Dorothy Sayers. Do you see any comparisons between Harriet and Mary? How do you think the pair of them would interact if they met?

A: No, there is no direct Sayers homage in the web site’s excerpt from THE ART OF DETECTION. You have to wait until May 30.

Frankly, much as I love her writing, I think Sayers had some problems with the idea of strong women. Harriet runs Lord Peter through merry hell, but without him she’s a pretty two-dimensional character. Can you imagine a Harriet Vane series? I think Russell would be polite to Harriett, interested in her profession and in her personal experience with being charged with murder, but she might not take her altogether seriously.

But I could be wrong. I’ll have to think about it.


Q: From Rebecca comes, The specific question about O Jerusalem made me think of a somewhat similar one of my own. Margery's miraculous healing in MREG has made me curious ever since I read it. One of Holmes's defining traits (beginning from the canon) has been absolute disbelief in the supernatural, yet no rational explanation is ever offered for Margery's healing. I was wondering why you wrote that the way you did? A "miraculous" event just seems out of place in a story about Sherlock Holmes.

A: Yes, I was rather surprised when my editor didn’t fight me over that passage. But I put it in, and would have argued to leave it in, precisely because of its lack of rationality. The world is full of unexplained happenings. The power of the mind over the body can be immense. I do not believe in miracles, but I know they happen, or at any rate, inexplicable things take place that, for lack of a better term, are called miraculous. MONSTROUS REGIMENT is the story of a mystic, a woman with a deep and personal relationship with the Divine. I don’t care if you regard that relationship as real or as delusional, and from the point of view of the novel, it doesn’t matter: to Margery Childe herself, that relationship is real, and powerful enough to heal injury.


Q: And Molly’s related query: I am currently re-reading the Mary Russell series, and am currently in the middle of A Monstrous Regiment of Women. A question occurred to me as I was reading it today, and I was glad to notice that you had posted the request for questions. Is Margery Childe a real person, or based on someone real, at least with regards to the Temple and the work she does there?

A: The short answer is, no. The longer answer is, Margery is what Aimee Temple McPherson might have looked like if Sister Aimee had been the real thing.


Q: Emma says, I think I have the most trivial question here! Does anyone actually smuggle freon in the USA? Or was that your own idea for Folly?

A: Actually yes, once upon a time people smuggled Freon, and may still do for all I know. It’s vicious on the environment, but it makes for more efficient refrigeration than the current eco-friendly substitutes, so I’m sure it’s brought in over the border sometimes.

Feb's answers (1)

Okay, that's enough questions for this month. If you haven't asked yours yet, could you save it for the first of March? Thanks.

Q. Mousie writes, I had thought of a question last week, but being incredibly forgetful, I forgot it. So the question I ask to substitute for my previous question is: Does Russell's experience with a Sari reflect one which you experienced? (I personally find them easy to wear, though that may be because mine is cotton)

A. I was mostly in northern India, where the salwaar kameez is worn instead of the sari. So I never had to wrestle with one, other than experimental ventures. I am assured that once you get used to it, wearing it is natural, and certainly in the south where it is commonplace, women wear it to work the fields and chase their kids.
Although I will say, most women in saris develop a constant twitch to keep the loose end over their shoulder.


Q: Iris Lady asks, Laurie, I'm curious to know how distracting it is to you when you must travel/sign books/ give talks as part of publicizing your books. For me, it would be very distracting ... especially if I had a book in progress. (I am not a seasoned traveler, and I believe you are.) Still, at the moment you are in the process of birthing a first draft ... every bit as exhausting as childbirth. I'm wondering if PR interruptions are asked of you at this point, and if so, how they affect your concentration on the task at hand.

A: I have very few commitments the next three months, just a handful of local talks, which certainly makes things easier. I know there are writers who fire up their laptop in-fight and produce their day’s stint, but that’s something I can do only if the current section of book is crystal clear in my mind, and it’s just a matter of getting it down. I find that two weeks on the road is followed by two weeks of hopeless catch-up at home. Which is why I try to have first drafts finished before a tour.


Q: Which books have sold the best - Mary Russell's or the gay Detective's?

A: If you mean Kate Martinelli, the Russells have sold marginally better. I’m not sure what the situation would be if I had eight Martinellis out, as I do with the Russells.


Q: Elle wants to know, Laurie, I have a question concerning O Jerusalem. Much is made in the book about Russell's new identity, Amir. All three of the men must learn to address her as Amir, and do so. However, you never mention whether Holmes also took on a new name. Throughout the book, he remains "Holmes" to the other three characters. I would have thought he needed an Arabic name as well. It's been a while since I read the book, so I don't remember whether Russell, Mahmoud, or Ali ever addressed Holmes by name with "outsiders" around, but it has always rather bothered me that Holmes doesn't have an Arabic name to go with his Bedouin disguise. You always pay such close attention to the details of your stories, which is one of the reasons I love your books so much. Am I being too nit-picky?

A: Are you being too nitpicky? Yeah, probably, but isn’t that part of the game? I suppose I had to stress that Russell was not Miri, but that she had a boy’s name to underscore her boy’s identity. As for Holmes, surely ’Olmez could be taken as Arabic.


Q: Melissa writes, I know your novels are character driven, but I’m wondering if you have any advice for setting description. Nothing I put on paper is close to what I see in my mind’s eye.

A: The frustration of trying to get words to evoke an experience, even a small and simple experience, is universal I am sure among writers—all but those convinced of their own Divinity. Even the best writers rage at the intractability of words, finite and limited, just as the best painters battle the limitations of paint and stone. How to come closer to what you have in mind? Pay attention to writers who “catch” a landscape or piece of dialogue, and examine how they do it. Not pieces of prose that jump out at you, that’s not the same thing as writing well. Pieces of writing that leave you feeling that you were there, walking along with the characters. Often you’ll find that what is effective is what is left out—there actually aren’t long stretches of description, just small touches that make it real.

Q: From Ruth comes, I'm just curious as to whether we'll ever see any of Kate's family in any future Martinelli stories, as we've had brief mentions of them in the last four books. Seeing as Kate and Lee are parents in the Art Of Detection, that must qualify Kate's mother as a grandmother?

A: Well, it happened with the Russell saga with LOCKED ROOMS, which was number eight. Who knows, it may come to pass with Kate as well?

More Q&A tomorrow.